Lines Melting Away
by infamouslastwords
Summary: Jin/Mugen slash. In the beginning it was a memory before it happened, and in the end it would be an untouchable prospect even while it existed.


**Lines Melting Away**

**by** infamous_last_**words**

**A/N:** written by request for Scrapped Zero.

Sometime between _meet_ing and _know_ing another verb lied, tucked away clean; jet black hair into the crook of a tan elbow like a magician's secrets, untold.

It was something clear in retrospect, like most things are.

Neither realized until the feeling had bared down upon them like some great, heavy beast in the middle of the night, in the center of a dank and dim forest. There was something primal in the emotion, urgent urges and intrinsic instincts concealed until unearthed. Unleashed, it reared and clawed at the threateningly-close-to-tearing-apart sky. Nails slit into pale blue; eruption.

The rain harrowed soil underfoot, trickling down tree trunks and tree boughs and tree leaves until everything had tangibly swelled. Each drop a globe, each globe soaking.

Stopped-in-their-tracks, Mugen felt Jin's heart, furious and enduring, like the taiko at festivals when he was a boy. Stagnation and the reminiscence fade his hand into the ronin's chest, their flesh diffusing, integrating and disappearing into the others'. Just colors and energy and premonition.

Like an ace up the sleeve, they would both later recall this event and think about it in future tense—they would bring things full circle, as if they had known about the moment ever since their eyes met; before, even. In the beginning it was a memory before it happened, and in the end it would be an untouchable prospect even while it existed.

Their clotheshairskin is still soggy with that night, even though the fabriccuticlesepidermis has dried.

Mugen grabbed the raven black mess and meshed it with his fingers, mashed their mouths together with a 'fuck you' growl. Jin's glasses pressed painfully into the bridge of his nose, were sent puttering out against the path underfoot as he pushed them, pushed Mugen away.

They laid streaked with rain in the moonlight.

"No."

Mugen stopped his skid on the mud and used useless click-clacks of metal heels to run up to the ronin once more, grabbing and meshing and mashing. Sounds dulled into imitation thumps and bumps and bruises spreading like flower petals opening against the sudden swiftness of sunrise. Mugen pushed Jin to a tree, all hands and fingers and confusion. Underneath their skin were intricate trails of shot capillaries, halfway through leaking into the rest of everything, bleeding ink against page paper.

Jin fought back; he lost his composure.

All the behaviors once steadfast and revered washed into one another and soon he bit and gnawed and bruised the same as the vagrant's violent vehemence did.

Blood between his gums and holding and held by the collar, Mugen smirked back, "Yes."

Because they wanted it; they had both been wanting it so horribly, and now just noticed. Mugen was not one to incubate his thoughts into demon things with wings and horns, so he was granted the serenity of forward-motion. Jin stayed placid and contemplated, contemplated every thought into a poison black sludge that stuck to the walls of his skull and threatened motion for not much else but watching with jade eyes behind unneeded glasses. This is why, despite Jin's attempts, Mugen gained the surer, upper hand.

"Yes," went the hiss, with wrists wrung and ears ringing when Jin's head smacked to the forest floor. Mugen climbed on top of him, the king to some childhood mountain, some innocuous game, and smirked down at him with his bloody mouth and bloodshot eyes. "Samurai," he taunted, in one drawn-out breath, everything moving into the next thing. "Let. Go."

They were naked bodies and moaning mouths and writhing tendon all under one tree, all over a million roots. Jin clung to Mugen, Mugen to Jin; like the rain water that permeated every stoma of their bared skin, the slickness and the soreness and the salaciousness carried momentum into every flicked fingertip skidding across straining skin, every contorted caress to cause calamity. Qualms tinged traveling touches and they shook—because of the rain and the closeness and the air. But one unto the other carried like a fluid ribbon through the river, and palm against palm as fingers intertwined; lines melting away.


End file.
